Crosshairs @ Grade

I put up a survey request last week regarding my free Civil 3D Reminders Pack. One of the requests was to add “A set cross-hair slope command (like LDT had for profile design). The command would ask you to select the Profile View (for vertical scale determination) and then ask the percent slope you want to set (neg or positive).”

Well I actually opened Land Desktop to see how the command worked. The command basically sets the snap angle of the cursor and turns on Ortho. I’m not good at Lisp or Diesel programming so I’m going basic and cover the steps to get the same functionality. Once the steps are outlined it shouldn’t be that difficult to add a command to the cui to perform the task in Civil 3D.

1. The first thing to do is type SnapAng at the command line.
2. Next click in an area within the profile view you want to have the crosshairs on.
3. Next type ‘PGS at the command line or select Profile Grade Station from the transparent toolbar.
4. Select the Profile View.
5. Specify the Grade.
6. Pick any station.
7. The cursor should now match the grade put in.
8. Lastly press the Ortho button (or F8) to turn Ortho on if it’s not already on.

You should now have the same functionality as you had in Land Desktop. To get back to the starting point make snapang = 0 and turn Ortho off.

Here’s a short video: http://screencast.com/t/lxctOrTOk